Ready Up

At the end of the road, turn right…

Well, on my last (and strangely also my first) post, I talked about how much I was looking forward to Burnout Paradise.

I had the day off work, so I arose early, and at the crack of 11.30am I headed down to my local supermarket to buy the game for £37.99 – or £12.01 less that any other shop with the word “Game” in the title would be selling it for.

And then I played it for hours. It’s a great game, bright, colourful and fast. As a single player game, I found it almost flawless, fantastic graphics, and it really flies along. Driving is classic Burnout, drifting around corners is fantastic fun and the crashes are spectacular.

Later in the day, I connected to Xbox Live and tried to play the game online, and then things got really funny. Really funny.

You see, the problem with the new Burnout is this: Consider this situation. You’ve just stolen a fancy car, and you’ve decided to drive it as fast as possible across town like some kind of speed freak mental case. Now, the problem is, you haven’t got the first clue where you’re going. A problem, for sure.

Never before have I seen a racing game where you watch the countdown, the green light goes, and then everyone in the game heads off in a different direction. It really was like Wacky Races. Endless drunken retards zooming off at exceptionally high speeds… in the wrong direction. And I’m including myself in that.

It’s not a problem with the game, it’s just a damn hard thing to do, driving fast and navigating at the same time. I’m fully expecting to be utterly trounced by a whole load of people who can do this better than me within about the first three days. I’m also thinking most of these people will be speedfreaks who have passed The Knowledge, though…

Anyway, remember people, don’t drink and drive; it’s hard enough to find your way sober as it is…

Posted

in

,

by

Tony

Tags:

, ,

Comments

7 responses to “At the end of the road, turn right…”

  1. Shaz avatar
    Shaz

    And you’d at least think they’d provide a Burnout Paradise SAT Nav!

  2. Donna avatar
    Donna

    That has got to be the silliest thing to not mark the route for a race. Is it possible still to finish if you’re lost?

    (Actually all the shops have it for £39.99 or less, including Game. Zavvi even has it for £38)

  3. Tony avatar
    Tony

    Part of the point of the game is that you have to find your own way, so in the main game and most online races the route isn’t mapped. It does give you a sat-nav style “turn right” here indication, but it doesn’t help much…

    And as for prices, in my local area, all the “proper” Game/game shops sell games for waaaay more than the supermarkets, but I suppose some places have better deals…

  4. Kirsten avatar
    Kirsten

    My problem is that Burnout is the fastest driving game around, yeah? I mean it’s eye-meltingly fast. Every single time I look at that map in the corner, even for a milli-second, I crash. Finding your own way in a driving game is fine but not at the speeds in Burnout. You can’t have super fast arcade play AND a free-roaming driving sim in one game.

    *is in the huff with Burnout Paradise*

  5. Simes avatar
    Simes

    You have to get to know the map, I think. It’s possible to get across large parts of the city quite quickly while hardly going on the roads at all, once you know where the short cuts are. Eventually you get to know the landmarks, too, so you can make your turns using them rather than having to look at the minimap.

    I think it’s tons of fun but it’s taking some time to learn where stuff is.

  6. Marko avatar
    Marko

    Burnout is top notch whether you know where you’re going or not and it must ALWAYS be played under the influence of alcohol. You tend to zone out when bombing down a street in a Stella induced haze – just so you can get home from the pub to play Burnout 😉

  7. Tony avatar
    Tony

    You just made me do my ‘Family Guy’ laugh with your comment about driving home to play Burnout. You know the ‘I shouldn’t laugh at that but damn it was funny’ laugh. That laugh!

    Giggety.

Leave a Reply